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Template talk:Showfacts biography
Good work This is great. Note the utility of |default- it can be used to avoid needless if else logic. If the query returns nothing, you can insert text like "at an unknown date" or alternatively fire another query. EG if date is empty, then return " |default=unknown date|?birth date-y}}". Auto narratives like this are especially useful because the massive scale of details that are stored in the SMW fields cannot be practically displayed in the person infobox, and are unsuitable for tabular output. For example death causes, and other properties that I haven't added like physical description and medical history to general info. We might like to provide some way to clearly allow contributors a forms way of correcting/adding details to these narratives. Perhaps decoration like a border or subtle background color with a small text link for editing details like we have with showinfo person/ showfacts person? -[[User:Phlox|'~'' Phlox']] 18:34, 15 June 2009 (UTC) :I added death causes - great idea! I noticed one problem: even though the defaults show on the template page, they do no show on the Person page. Also, birth subdivision1 is shown but death subdivision1 is not. Bill Hunsicker 20:08, 15 June 2009 (UTC) ::Right. There are some non intuitive things about SMW, so I made up some wrapper templates that simplify some of these issues. Let me know what you think. The changes are reflected in the template code I just entered. This is your baby, and feel free to change it to whatever you want. I omitted some of the stuff like second marriage you had- but the template edit was just to give an example of usage of these wrapper templates. SMW and the info boxes are great but they tend to depersonalize our ancestors which for many contributors is diametrically opposed to their goals. A lot of templates generated from gedcoms are going to be sparse on text, so I think this is a great way to personalize the SMW information. ::You mentioned other programs or sites that generate these stories. Can you give me pointers to the best ones?-[[User:Phlox|'~'' Phlox']] 19:54, 16 June 2009 (UTC) :::Actually, Robin Patterson created the /doc for the Biography Template (which mentions the programs that create little stories - which I assume are family tree type programs). I copied that /doc and modified it for this template. I prefer your solution that eliminates the commas without the bulky unknown this, unknown that. For the most part people who visit the site will know state names and counties have "county" after the name. Bill Hunsicker 21:41, 16 June 2009 (UTC) To do list Dates *Approx dates *If death date or birth date is unknown, we need to say so and not calc age. eg: Caroline Maggie Belcher (1870-?) -[[User:Phlox|'~'' Phlox']] 04:57, 25 June 2009 (UTC) *As I've said elsewhere in the last 22 hours (on a less relevant page), if death date or birth date is unknown, but was stated to be "bef" something or "aft" something, we should not get this template to state (as it currently does) that the birth or death was in that year — we could let that part of the code default to the "unknown date" statement, which is clearly accurate, or we could say "in or before" or "in or after" to cover the cases where the "bef" or "aft" could be referring to the same year because a month was specified. I'm inclined to go the same way with "c" (which probably ties in with what Phlox had in mind for the first item on this list) - say "about" instead of "in". — Robin Patterson (Talk) 12:22, 21 July 2009 (UTC) --- revised 01:41, April 18, 2010 (UTC) Places Counties Stop it truncating county names. When I say my ancestor was born in Lanarkshire, I don't want to be told "William Forlong of Wellshott was born 22 January 1762 in Wellshott, Lanark, Scotland". He was not. Lanark is a small town in the middle of Lanarkshire, a long way from Wellshott. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 13:07, March 8, 2010 (UTC) It's still doing it. I've just upgraded a page, including "Wellington County, New South Wales" in the proper box, and the minibio says "Wellington, New South Wales". Would someone please record here the place where we can look to fix that. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 11:27, September 29, 2010 (UTC) :I have just changed to include the word "County" in the "short name" property, which should fix it (in the fullness of time). Thurstan 21:17, September 29, 2010 (UTC) ::Thank you, cobber! — Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:38, October 16, 2010 (UTC) Introductory words etc We have inconsistent use of prepositions and countries and possibly of punctuation. Example: :Willie Warner was born 5 December 1905 in Cross Village, Michigan to William Lowell Warner (1876-1932) and Emma Mae Austin (1871-1949) and died 9 April 1974 in Petoskey, in Michigan, of unspecified causes. William married Lottie Kunkle 11 November 1938 in Petoskey, Michigan, United States. Birth and marriage are "locality, Michigan" but death is "locality, in Michigan". We should standardize; on whichever is easier if one is much easier. I prefer the proper narrative style using "in" if it can be arranged, but it's not necessary when there's an "in" for an earlier (lower-level) place, so maybe we can have an introductory "in" with no separate "in" for county or state, etc? Marriage is in United States but birth and death don't mention the country. Consistency desirable there, too. I suggest omitting the country because it would be a bit repetitive for all three and is often generally known or easy to find elsewhere (e.g. the infobox). — Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:38, October 16, 2010 (UTC) :I noticed the inconsistency, and would prefer the style with "," rather than "in". Note that if you only have country for birth/death, I think it currently displays nothing, so if we drop the country, we need to make sure that it is shown if that is all we have. Thurstan 03:28, October 16, 2010 (UTC) (away from home) Person names Our clever use of "short name" is good. But there are inconsistencies, which are probably worth ironing out. :Willie Warner was born 5 December 1905 in Cross Village, Michigan to William Lowell Warner (1876-1932) and Emma Mae Austin (1871-1949) and died 9 April 1974 in Petoskey, in Michigan, of unspecified causes. William married Lottie Kunkle 11 November 1938 in Petoskey, Michigan, United States. Starting with the short name ("Willie Warner" here) is good. But we use his first name near the end in the marriage sentence. No need to repeat the whole short name, but the stated "first name" may be not a name that the person or his or her family ever used. I get annoyed when government organizations address my wife as "Dear Virginia". She has been called "Julie" by family and friends since birth. Better to repeat the "short name", I suggest, despite the repetition; there will often be a line or two between them, thus making the repetition not too tedious. A long-term alternative could be the creation of a new Property:Usual "first" name. A short-term alternative would be to use "He" or "She" in the marriage sentences. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:51, October 16, 2010 (UTC) Detailed examination This template is one of the most obvious things about a Familypedia article and therefore deserves to be as flawless and friendly as possible. Some of us can't do all the coding necessary but can offer ideas and can partly understand what's there. So here it is broken into bits (generally starting a new line where a template starts or ends) for discussion of each. Inside "pre" tags so that it remains as non-functioning code. Explanation and discussion in new lines starting with stars and with explanations/translations in parentheses. omments best prefaced with "Comment:". ***(If this appears on a saved page, show all the following stuff down to the end of this inclusive template) |' }}' ***(If program can find a "short name" (which it should do, because that's one of the three required fields), ***show it here; else show the base page name) was born ***(Birth year, with or without detailed dates): | |bef=before |aft=after |c=circa }} }} }} ***birth places: ***(If there is a birth street, show it prefaced with "at"; if there is not, show nothing) |in}} ***(If there is one or are more than one of the village/county etc names, preface it or each (or the group? - see death and wedding coding) with "in" ***and show them in order, with their "short names" if any) ***Comment: short names can be quite misleading, as noted in the "Lanark" comment above }} **(Parents) ***First if there is a father (listed first if mother too)) | to | and }}| ***(Mother if no father stated) | to }} }} ***(Death - age at death or current age if living) | | | || >100| and died at an unspecified date| and is now years of age }} }} |and died ***(death year, with or without detailed dates, with logic as for birth): | |bef=before |aft=after |c=circa }} }} }} ***(Death places, with logic not quite the same as for birth): ***(Death age and causes) at the age of years of }}. ***Comments: (1) if no birth year, it says "at the age of 0 years", which is silly; would someone please fix so that it says nothing about age if it has no birth year stated; (2) we have hundreds or thousands now that are said to have died of "unspecified causes" - but some of them have causes stated in the text, so there must be a problem getting that info into the death causes template; on one for which I had a death cause I did not see an appropriate box on the way through; where is it? -- Robin, 19 May 2010 ***(Marriages): | married ***{Spouse short name - here no alternative if no short name; but it's compulsory) ***Dates and places, with logic not quite the same as for birth and death }}| | |bef=before |aft=after |c=circa }} }} |if blank= }} }} |in}} }}. ***Comment: There must be some way of including subsequent marriages!? Robin saw one in April 2010; it was in a new paragraph. }} ***(That was the end of the main inclusive "if" template; ***if, on the other hand, the showfacts template is NOT on a saved page but only on a preview, just show the following) |The "showfacts biography" template displays an automatically generated narrative of the details of the person on file including parents, vital statistics and spouse(s).}} ***(Then we have a template that displays the documentation page, with non-displayed categories.) Errors to be fixed More important than adding frills such as latitude must be the fixing of some gross errors. I repeat: If no birth year, it says "at the age of 0 years", which is silly; would someone please fix so that it says nothing. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 09:04, July 3, 2010 (UTC) :I have suppressed that, pending fixing. The "age" fact currently shows zero if there's no birth date. Some deeper recoding is probably called for. But it's not the least bit urgent. Statisticians are interested in age at death, but ordinary people can work it out if they want to. It was often wrong here anyway, if only the years were known, and that's worse than saying nothing about the age. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 14:39, July 10, 2010 (UTC) No death date :Catherine Hanrahan was born 1 February 1864 in BathurstThe part "|Bathurst, New South Wales" of the query was not understood. Results might not be as expected. , The part "|New South Wales" of the query was not understood. Results might not be as expected. to Patrick Hanrahan (1811-1889) and Bridget Hogan (1825-1891) and is now 0 years of age. No, she's not. How did that error creep back in? Robin Patterson 05:40, February 1, 2011 (UTC) I have removed the clause about age until we have all the SMW bits working again. Thurstan 04:36, February 9, 2011 (UTC) :Thank you. Robin Patterson 07:35, February 9, 2011 (UTC) Bad problem probably linked to "short name" For the past month or so, when I view the output of this template (on any page, as far as I can tell), many of the individual fields have warnings (displayed as a little yellow triangle with an exclamation mark). For example, in Elizabeth_Dunton_(1658-1740), the biography expands as :Elizabeth Dunton was born 25 March 1658 in The part "|Reading" of the query was not understood. Results might not be as expected. , Middlesex CountyThe part "|Middlesex County, Massachusetts" of the query was not understood. Results might not be as expected. , The part "|Massachusetts" of the query was not understood. Results might not be as expected. to Samuel Dunton (c1625-1683) and Anna Felch (c1625-) and died 1740 in The part "|Malden" of the query was not understood. Results might not be as expected. , in Middlesex CountyThe part "|Middlesex County, Massachusetts" of the query was not understood. Results might not be as expected. , in Massachusetts, of unspecified causes. Elizabeth married Nathaniel EvansThe part "|Nathaniel Evans (c1650-1710)" of the query was not understood. Results might not be as expected. . The warnings appear to be associated with calls in the template that include the "shortname" option (contrast "Massachusetts" (nation-subdiv1) in the birth and death narratives). Is this something fixable? If not, can we get rid of those "shortname" calls? Bruce Kendall 08:53, February 19, 2011 (UTC) :Thanks for taking the trouble to paste and discuss that example, Bruce. See also Forum:Template:Showfacts biography. I had a feeling it was related to the short name. I hope one of our experts can give it attention, SOON. Robin Patterson (Talk) 09:54, February 19, 2011 (UTC) Many thanks to Thurstan for fixing the problem with shortname! Bruce Kendall 22:08, March 13, 2011 (UTC) Reducing birth year Has anyone else noticed it cutting a year off the birth year? --- Robin Patterson (Talk to me) 12:06, March 10, 2011 (UTC) : Everything looks normal to me. -- Bruce Kendall 22:12, March 13, 2011 (UTC) I think that SMW is mis-handling the "Gregorian Calendar switch" in 1582. My evidence is a sample of pages: These are wrong (1582 or earlier): *Charles, Duke of Lower Lorraine (953-993) *Adelaide de Troyes (c955-c991) *Catherine Carew (bef1500-?) *Lawrence Craufurd of Kilbirnie (c1500-1547) *Nael Unknown (c1550-1609) *Peter Gates (c1550-?) *Anna Unknown (c1570-?) *Robert Campbell of Glenorchy, 3rd Baronet (c1580-1659) *Margaret Cave (c1580-?) *Thomas Lumbert (c1582-1662) *Naele Oesminck (c1582-?) These are okay (post 1582): *Unknown Boijckinck (c1583-?) *Mary Forth (1583-1615) *Henry Culliford (c1585-c1638) *Lambert Hemink (c1585-?) *John Churchill (c1590-1659) *Henry Fowler (c1590-?) *Aelken Eelinck (c1595-c1640) *Edward Doty (bef1600-1655) *Berent Cempes (c1600-?) *Bastiaan Gerrits Metman (bef1680-?) *Peter Corben (c1700-1772) *Aaltje Ariens van der Salm (1729-aft1761) Thurstan 00:57, March 14, 2011 (UTC) :Thank you for the research and theory. Food for thought. --- Robin Patterson (Talk to me) 11:52, March 20, 2011 (UTC) Bad dates after the March 2011 upgrade People born and died in 0 BC? Dates that have the year-m-d error (OK in the infobox but red link year-m-d in the minibio). --- Robin Patterson (Talk to me) 11:52, March 20, 2011 (UTC) I find that hitting "refresh" once or twice fixes the "0 BC" problem. Do you have any examples where it is persistent? Thurstan 21:29, March 20, 2011 (UTC) :Just checked Charlemagne, who came right with one null edit. So I guess others respond equally. Thanks for fixing the other stuff. I'll sing out if I see another of those red dates. Can you organise a Refresh button for Firefox and the standard skin? --- Robin Patterson (Talk to me) 12:05, March 21, 2011 (UTC) ::In the early days of the "new skin" I tried various "gadgets" which promised a "refresh" button, but none of them seem to work. Thurstan 20:24, March 21, 2011 (UTC) Street field ought to be still prefixed with "at" Near the top of this page, we read: " ". So if I put "sea" in the street field my person should appear (as he was) "born at sea", but the one I did a couple of hours ago (George Wright Palmer) is "born in sea". Has the coding slipped a bit? -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 08:11, December 19, 2013 (UTC) Where does page "pull" Ancestor information ???? Complaint in 2011 :Copied from one of the offending pages' talk page: Talk:Jane_Walker_Gillespy_(1800-1882). Several of the pages are somehow pulling information so that it says something like "Ancestors are from United Kingdom." On these pages, the ancestors were not from the United Kingdom. I'd like to find out how to either eliminate the statement OR fix it correctly. Help Margie Cowan :mcowan @ erols.com Cowantex 17:58, April 8, 2011 (UTC) :The lady doth protest too much. At least some of that person's ancestors were indeed from the United Kingdom, though they may have had political reasons for not recognizing that term. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:03, May 31, 2011 (UTC) Serious ancestry questions in 2015 Thurstan told me back in about August that the ancestry and migration templates had crept into the minibio and made it a compulsory part of a person-page (so that if it was omitted it would break some ancestry chains). I said I thought (correctly, as I have confirmed) the migration had been in for about 5 years. Here's the evidence of when the ancestry crept in: http://familypedia.wikia.com/index.php?title=Template%3AShowfacts_biography&diff=695164&oldid=590649 shows the differences made by five undocumented edits by User:rtol, who added "death at event" (which is apparently fine though seldom used) and the ancestry. (Migration was already there.) Maybe rtol can tell us whether the result is that person-pages have to include the minibio because otherwise some important chains will be broken. If so, someone who knows what's what should have changed the documentation for the template, which clearly indicates that the minibio is optional. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 01:50, November 5, 2015 (UTC) Confused myself a bit about migration. Yes, it was there, and its documentation was changed in 2010 to indicate that it is recursive and has become part of the minibio: http://familypedia.wikia.com/wiki/Template:Migration/doc?diff=next&oldid=541122 - so the last sentence of my previous comment definitely stands. User:Phlox, who created the template and said in the documentation that it could be deleted at will, could not have foreseen that someone might insert things that needed to be on every ancestor's page. I wonder whether the insertions do need to be there. Could they instead be a separate, compulsory, template (with a stand-alone heading like ) so that the minibio can once again be omitted if an author can replace it with something better? -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 04:41, November 5, 2015 (UTC) Placement of other places On the form, the last location box is for other places. Sometimes that's for an abolished county or country. More often (in my experience) it's a hospital or castle or cemetery or homestead. Having it at the end of the list can be puzzling, as in, for example: :Gordon Forlong was born 22 September 1897 in Pohangina, Manawatu-Wanganui, New Zealand "Highland Home" to Douglas Gordon Forlong (1869-1955) and ... Let's put it at the start (possibly in parentheses so that there's less of an oddity where it's a country etc). -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:14, May 31, 2011 (UTC) I disagree. As I read it, "street" is for "Highland Home" etc, and "other" is just a sign of complete failure of the model. Thurstan 03:01, May 31, 2011 (UTC) :That's certainly not what the documentation and instructions say. The example for "street" gives no hint of including buildings. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 03:03, February 7, 2013 (UTC) :I saw the "other places" as a placeholder because a transfer from info pages to SMW would have been difficult to "split" the place names into the different subdivision fields. -— AMK152 05:03, May 31, 2011 (UTC) ::"Other" certainly had that value (though it may not have been what Phlox intended for its long-term use); editors following the transition can easily drag the bits into their proper fields. Maybe we should dig deeper into his documentation in case there's any really useful info (er - fact???!) we can give users. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 03:03, February 7, 2013 (UTC) Understating dates file:FP-trimdates.png - each year is one less than what's in the infobox. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 04:05, March 15, 2013 (UTC) :see discussion above at "Reducing birth year". Is this an SMW problem or a PHP problem? Thurstan (talk) 04:24, March 15, 2013 (UTC) I've twigged. Even before I saw a reduction of a few days, I concluded that where there is only a year it takes that as 1 January then subtracts a few days for the Gregorian date, probably any time before the Brits switched in 1751/52, even before anybody switched (1580??). Now here's the proof: 5 days subtracted. . That shot also illustrates what a difference a day makes (as they say). With just a year of three digits, the program says that's not a real year and gives us 1970. With a day or month it can handle the date. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 10:20, October 16, 2013 (UTC) (Thurstan fixed the 1970 problem shortly after this.) Now who can dig behind the template and find how to stay with the given date instead of converting to Gregorian calendar? -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 22:51, November 13, 2013 (UTC) :(see my note and the link): I think the problem is SMW is assuming Julian on input and Gregorian on output, or similar. It seems to say that SMW version 1.8.0 has a parameter for input and output to override this behaviour, but it doesn't seem to work on our version. Maybe we have to get the date, check if it is before the cutoff, and add the 10 days back if it is. Thurstan (talk) 23:15, November 13, 2013 (UTC) Illogical order for dates Recently I have been annoyed to see that full dates in the minibio are in the illogical form used by newspapers and people of North American origin: middle unit of time followed by smaller unit of time followed by much larger unit of time. (MDY, in short.) Has this been under my nose for long? Which property or template sets it? (Maybe I can be thankful they aren't just numbers joined by slashes to make them ambiguous!) -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 06:31, October 9, 2015 (UTC) :I am not seeing that: for Gisela Agnes von Anhalt-Köthen (1722-1751) I see (copy-and-paste): ::Gisela Agnes von Anhalt-Köthen was born 21 September 1722 in Köthen, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany to Leopold von Anhalt-Köthen (1694-1728) and Friederike Henriette von Anhalt-Bernburg (1702-1723) and died 20 April 1751 in Dessau, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany of unspecified causes. She married Leopold II. Maximilian von Anhalt-Dessau (1700-1751) 25 May 1737 in Bernburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. :Maybe it is being picked up from preferences (perhaps of the page creator?). The display is the properties which are actually displayed are Property:birth date string etc which were created in 2013 to fix the "off by one year" bug. Thurstan (talk) 06:42, October 9, 2015 (UTC) ::Thank you for the detail. I will look more closely at instances I see in case there is a discernible pattern. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 12:24, October 9, 2015 (UTC) ::Here's the latest, which certainly can't be blamed on the sole author's wiki preferences. Notice how the style differs for some events: :::Tame Horomona Rehe (Tommy Solomon) was born May 7, 1884 in Waikaripi, Chatham Islands, New Zealand to Rangitapua Horomona Rehe (1856-1915) and Ihimaera Te Teira (-1903) and died March 19, 1933 in Manukau, Chatham Islands, New Zealand of pneumonia and heart failure. He married Ada Fowler (c1870-1915) 30 September 1903 in Waitangi, Chatham Islands, New Zealand. He married Whakarawa Rene (-1968) 21 October 1916 in Temuka, Timaru District, Canterbury Region, New Zealand. ::-- Robin Patterson (Talk) 12:31, October 9, 2015 (UTC) A bit of a can-of-worms here. At present Property:birth date string and Property:death date string are set in (called ultimately from ), and used by . These properties are set by capturing (as a string) the setting for Property:birth date and Property:death date. Note that the corresponding properties for wedding dates are not set or used (in fact, they have not been defined), though for consistency they probably should be. I don't know how the format is set: I will experiment with user preferences. If we look at people who died in March 1933, we see: The odd one out (for me now) is Tame Horomona Rehe (1884-1933). First test: with my date preference set to "04:48, 2015 October 10" I created two pages Leopold von Anhalt-Köthen (1694-1728)‎‎ and Friederike Henriette von Anhalt-Bernburg (1702-1723)‎‎, and I see nothing untoward about their "minibios". Thurstan (talk) 04:53, October 10, 2015 (UTC) :Hmmmm - Tame's dates are OK but date strings don't match. Thank you again. Now here's another clue, maybe. It's a pre-bugfix paste from Tame's son. Note: (1) styles differ for the duplicates; (2) no wedding mentioned even though it's in the infobox. ::Thomas Solomon, Thomas Solomon was born 11 August 1918, August 11, 1918 in Chatham Islands, New Zealand, Chatham Islands, New Zealand to Tame Horomona Rehe (1884-1933), Tame Horomona Rehe (1884-1933) and Whakarawa Rene (-1968), Whakarawa Rene (-1968) and died 12 August 1985, August 12, 1985 in Ashburton, Ashburton District, Canterbury Region, New Zealand, Ashburton, Ashburton District, Canterbury Region, New Zealand of unspecified causes. Ancestors are from New Zealand. :Something else to ponder over during the square dancing. In case it might help with the date bugtracking, I'll leave Thomas in his bugged state until further notice. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 05:07, October 10, 2015 (UTC) ::The marriage is easy: returns " ", which is not equal to "true", so it doesn't look like he is married. Thurstan (talk) 05:36, October 10, 2015 (UTC) :::More mystery? Code says: ::::"|ifmarried-g1=true ::::"| ... " :::I know what it might be: I'd only just added the marriage date etc - but I think I'd had the "true" on a previous edit. :::-- Robin Patterson (Talk) 13:09, October 10, 2015 (UTC) I noticed one or two more "Newspapaer/American" dates the other day but I didn't have time to investigate. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 21:14, May 1, 2017 (UTC) "the" Netherlands etc Would it be difficult to get the minibio to prefix "the" to nation names that want it? -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 21:19, May 1, 2017 (UTC) :But they don't want it: we write Harlingen, Netherlands, not "Harlingen, the Netherlands". We say "Harlingen is in the Netherlands", but that is not how the place names are formated in the minibio. Thurstan (talk) 21:39, May 1, 2017 (UTC)